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A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer network systems and methods for displaying information. In particular, the present invention is drawn to dynamically and interactively displaying information in response to the movement of a pointing device such as a mouse or a trackball.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The number of Internet users is growing at an astronomical pace. Because of this growth, it is becoming essential for companies, regardless of their core business, to create a company web site and to advertise on the World Wide Web (WWW). Consequently, on-line advertising through the Internet has emerged as one of the most effective ways to communicate with potential consumers. Currently, a number of different advertising methods for sending information to attract potential consumers through the Internet is available.
FIG. 1 is a computer monitor screen printout that illustrates an advertising method called banners, commonly referred to as "banner ads," which is one of the most common forms of advertising on the Internet. Since banner ads are usually provided in the form of a "hyperlink," Internet users must click on banner ad areas to retrieve more information about an advertisement. Banner ads are stationary and a number of different ads can be randomly located in any vacant area of a computer screen. Most net users or netizens tend to ignore the banner ads because of the time it takes to click on the banner ad areas to get more information about the advertisement. Moreover, since there can be a large number of banner ads present in a web site, the banner ads occupy a lot of space on the computer screen. This in turn reduces the amount of available space for the main content of the web site.
Another common form of sending information to potential consumers through the Internet is a method called "frames," which was introduced by leading web navigating programs and browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator. FIG. 2 is an illustration of a computer screen having frames used for displaying information. Unlike banner ads, frame advertisements take a portion of a computer screen and create separate windows for displaying an advertisement. In other words, the computer screen is divided into two or more windows thereby decreasing the size of the window intended to include the main content of the web site. Thus, frames take a lot of space away from the main content of the web site. It is also noted that additional time must be used to generate multiple windows in order to display advertisements using the frame method, and that adds to the total time it takes to load the main content of the web site. Therefore, a lot web sites do not currently utilize the frame method and many that do utilize it at all have minimized the area of the advertisement window.
FIG. 3 is an illustration of a computer screen depicting an additional form of advertising through the Internet called "pop-ups" or "self-appearing windows," which appear on the computer screen regardless of a user's intention. Because this form of advertisement appears by itself and blocks a substantial part of a user's working window, it can annoy users and induce negative responses from the potential consumers. Moreover, since pop-ups can be simply eliminated from the working window if a user resizes or drags the pop up to another part of the window, pop-ups, as an advertisement tool, do not leave a lasting impression on potential consumers.
More recently a product called "Comet Cursor" was introduced by a company named Comet Systems, Inc. This product is illustrated in FIG. 4 and is described in PCT application number PCT/US98/12538, claiming priority on U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/882,580 filed Jun. 26, 1997, incorporated herein by reference. Comet Cursor transforms the image of a pointer or cursor into advertisement information to attract potential consumers through the Internet. Although Comet Cursor tries to resolve problems existing in the previous forms of advertisement discussed above, it still has drawbacks that need to be addressed. Comet Systems' main object is to modify the cursor, referred to as the cursor image, to a shape or form of a specific image displayed on a screen as a result of the position of the cursor on the screen. However, the major drawback of this system is that the image of the cursor changes regardless of the user's intention. The image of the cursor simply changes in response to the location of the cursor on the screen. Another notable drawback is that once the operation of the image change is activated, the user cannot stop the activation of the advertisement information and can become annoyed and lose interest in the information being displayed. It is further noted that since the cursor changes form, it is difficult for the user to be sure which objects are being selected by the cursor. In addition a cursor display area is only 32 pixels.times.32 pixels, thus limiting the area available to display information. In some cases the cursor display area will be too small to display all of the desired or necessary information. Finally, a separate program called a Plug-in must be installed in order to receive the benefit of the service from the Comet Cursor. Therefore, the user will not only be annoyed and lose interest in the advertisements because of the reasons explained above, but will also be burdened with the installation of the Plug-in program.
A system by Apple Computer Company displays information using help bubbles and is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,448 incorporated herein by reference. In this system the MAC Operating System, which implements a graphical user interface, displays help information through the use of help bubbles. When the cursor points to or selects an object, a help bubble appears on the screen displaying help information corresponding to the object selected by the cursor. The help bubble is located near the cursor, but is only displayed when the cursor points to or is selecting a specific object. When the user moves the cursor to another object, the help bubble is no longer displayed. Therefore, the help information will not be displayed unless a specific object is selected. It is further noted that it is impossible to disable the display of a help bubble once it is viewed without entirely disabling the display of all help bubbles.